Page 17 of Conflict Conclusion

“I’m worried that he’s not ready for us to live together, and, if I ask right now, when he’s feeling so…” James searched for the word, but his mom beat him to it.

“Unsettled?”

James nodded. “I’m worried that he’ll say yes, even if he doesn’t mean it. And then I’ll move in, and he’ll be even worse than unsettled. He’ll be…”

Why was it so hard for him to find his words today? This was why he hadn’t wanted to talk about it on the cruise. Even when he tried to think it through in his head, he found himself stumbling over his fears for himself and his fears for Leon. It felt like they were all tangling up, forming the knotted barbs around that stupid ball.

“Overwhelmed?” his mom offered.

James tipped his head back and forth. “Yeah…overwhelmed by the change but also overwhelmed by me and my stuff and what living with me entails. You know how forgetful I can be with certain things, like taking out the trash and unloading the dishwasher, and you and I have our own particular ways of doing things. I’m afraid he’s going to be…” The word was so simple and yet somehow it encompassed everything James had been struggling to say. “Unhappy. With me, and us, and our home, and then…I’ll be alone. There won’t be you, or dad, or Leon, or Yarmen. It’ll just be me, myself, and I, and I’ve never been alone before, and while I know people live alone, and it’s totally fine for them—I mean, look at Howard and Linda. They’ve been living and thriving alone for years, but…”

James’ words caught in his throat, lodged there like the knotted-up Christmas lights they would need to sort through. His mom didn’t seem to be in any rush to do so, though. She just stood there, her eyes shimmering in the muted light, as James stuttered and stumbled his way through this.

She was like a lighthouse on the edge of a cliff, guiding James towards land as he tried to navigate the tangles and knots.

“I don’t want to be alone,” he said finally, sweat beginning to form where their hands were clasped together. “But I feel like it’s inevitable. Either I live here alone, move out on my own alone, or I insert myself into Leon’s life and his home, and, when things inevitably fall apart, I’ll be alone, but for real.”

His mom nodded, her face grave, the lines around her eyes pronounced. “You could always get a cat.”

James nearly fell over. The ball in his chest didn’t seem to know what to do with such a random subject change. It slowly settled back into his stomach as his shoulders relaxed from where they had been residing up near his earlobes, and he narrowed his eyes at his mom.

“What?”

“Your fears are valid, honey,” she said, placing her other hand on top of their joined ones. “You’ve never lived on your own before, and to be honest, neither have I. I went from college to living with your father, to the three of us, to just living with you. I didn’t ever want to live alone, and so I haven’t. I’m not surprised you feel the same way, and I can’t blame you for being scared right now. Big changes are happening, but eventually you will have to make a decision. No matter what happens, though, you don’t ever have to be alone. You have your friends, you have me, Howard, and Linda, and if you’re worried about this house, or a new apartment being lonely, get a cat.”

James shook his head, even as that ball finally settled into a warm spot in the middle of his core. His mom knew how much he’d wanted a cat. They had talked about it a few times, but as soon as he’d started dating Leon, he’d put a pin in it.

“I would want to wait, so I could introduce them to Yarmen,” James said.

His mom nodded again, her smile soft. “You’ve said that before, because you have thought about it, and you know you do want to live with him.”

“Of course I do. He’s…I think he’s the love of my life.”

“Well,” she said, releasing James’ hand so she could reach down and pick up the paper wreath. “I don’t think moving in with the love of your life is going to make him hate you, even if you are physically incapable of turning off the lights when you leave a room.”

James groaned at the decades-long argument. “I don’t do it on purpose!”

“I know, dear, and you’ll have to explain that to Leon, just like I’m sure he’ll have to explain his own idiosyncrasies to you. That’s part of growing together as a couple.”

James thought of Leon’s inability to ever have his laundry done at the appropriate time, and his obnoxiously loud clicky-clacky keyboard. Almost against his will, his lips pulled up at the sides, and his mom smiled back.

“Just like growing from a boy to a man, there are going to be some growing pains,” she said, handing him the paper wreath. She reached back down into the box and pulled out a small, misshapen blob of pottery. It was supposed to have been an apple, but his eight year old hands hadn’t been able to get the curves right. “But it’s something you figure out together.”

James huffed and accepted the blob, along with a papier-mache bowl and a hand turkey, as his mom went through the box.

“Are you taking all these with you?” he asked, shaking his head adamantly as his mom tried to place a pile of rudimentary crayon drawings in his arms.

“I thought I would just take that painted flowerpot downstairs and…if I could just find…aha!”

She triumphantly pulled out another set of blobs. James squinted at it until a memory came to him, and he recognized the shapes. He dumped his handful of crafts back into the box and gently took the little statue from her. In seventh grade, he’d done a unit on pottery, and the assignment had been to make something for his best friend. At the time, all his best friends had been girls, and they had just been getting into makeup and fashion and boys. While he could relate to the last one, everything else had been a confusing jumble for him, so he’d chosen a different strategy for the project.

His mom had always been and always would be his best friend, so he’d sculpted the two of them standing side by side, their arms linked. Thankfully, his limited artistic ability meant they were basically just two shapeless blobs, without any discernible features or genders.

“I think I’ll put it on the mantle, so I can look at it every day,” his mom said, her voice enviably steady even as James’ bottom lip trembled.

He linked his arm with hers, tipping his head to rest on hers, so they were a mirror image of the statue still clutched in his hand. Nowadays, he was the taller of the two, the one more likely to reach for her hand than the other way around. Even though she had two new sets of hands to help her put things away on the top shelf or flatten out the hallway runner so she didn’t trip, James didn’t think he would ever stop reaching for her.

“I can’t wait to tour the place,” he said, turning them around so they could head back to the corner his mom had already started digging through.